Meaning & Origins

English vernacular form of the New Testament Greek name Zacharias, a form of Hebrew Zechariah ‘God has remembered’. This was the name of the father of John the Baptist, who underwent a temporary period of dumbness for his lack of faith (Luke 1), and of a more obscure figure, Zacharias son of Barachias, who was slain ‘between the temple and the altar’ (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51). In the United States it is familiar as the name of a 19th-century president, Zachary Taylor. Since the 1990s the name has been remarkably popular in the English-speaking world, especially in the United States.

English: habitational name from any of the numerous places so called, especially Ashton-under-Lyne near Manchester. Most are named from Old English æsc ‘ash tree’ + tūn ‘settlement’; the one in Northamptonshire is (æt þǣm) æscum ‘(at the) ash trees’. Others have been assimilated to this from different sources. The one in Devon is ‘the settlement (tūn) of Æschere’, while the one in Hertfordshire is ‘the settlement of Ælli’.